Fogliano Redipuglia

Until 1923 this comune was called simply Fogliano — a name already attested in 963 as «in Foliano» — then for a decade and a half Fogliano di Monfalcone. In 1939 the council asked for, and obtained, the addition beside the main village of the name of one of its hamlets, Redipuglia, because in the meantime that name had become famous throughout Italy: the military memorial had been built there. It is a rare case, a village taking its name from its own war cemetery. And the name, originally, had nothing solemn about it: Redipuglia comes from the old Slavic Rodopolje, «cleared field» or «uncultivated field», and is attested from 1265 as Radopolia. In the memorial, inaugurated in 1938, rest almost forty thousand identified Italian soldiers and more than sixty-nine thousand whose names are unknown; in a nearby cemetery lie about fourteen thousand Austro-Hungarians. On 13 September 2014 pope Francis came here to pray for the dead of all wars.

That this was frontier land, however, had been known for centuries. In 1474 the Republic of Venice had three star forts built — at Fogliano, at Gradisca and at Mainizza — to control the fords of the Isonzo and stop the Turkish incursions; when the Turks returned, in 1477 and 1478, the little forts slowed them but the troops went round them further north. Venice then built the fortress of Gradisca, and the three forts, by now useless, were demolished by 1486. In 1499 came the last great incursion: the commander of Gradisca preferred to shut himself in the fortress with his men, and the Ottomans got as far as the Livenza. On the ruins of the Fogliano fort, in 1521, the mercenary captain Teodoro del Borgo had the church of Santa Maria in Monte built, to discharge a vow made to the Madonna during the siege of Osoppo.